“My dreams are crowded with people, as though to compensate for the solitariness of my waking hours.”

“My love has saved me. It wraps strong arms around me when I cry with despair;it gives me the routine of a working week to lend vicarious structure to my shapeless days. It brings me daily laughter,...”

“By staying, by shirking the responsibility and effort of leaving, by continuing to occupy this lovely man while giving him neither children nor a public companion nor a welcoming home-do I do wrong?”

“And all my ethical reasoning crumbles to ash in the sheer fact of his presence. Because together, even in darkness, we light up a room; because the clotted guilt inside me breaks up and disperses b...”

“In the end we have one choice: to suffer well or suffer badly, to reach for or to reject that quality which is termed, equally, by both religious and secular, grace.”

“Most of the time, I do not want to die. But I would like to have the means of death within my grasp. I want to feel the luxury of choice, to know the answer to How do I bear this? need not always b...”

“Each stage of your lifeis like petals of a flower... unfolding and opening until it comes to full bloom...You will blossom and then you die...But know that this is not your ending.”

“What made the difference between choosing to die and deciding to live?Was it the weight of sadness that buckled them over and dragged them away from all sane, rational thoughts with an anchor of ho...”

“When you die you will not bring any possessions, but you will be accompanied by the song up into heaven”

“July 24, 6:03 A.M.The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff...Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for...”

“A book is a suicide postponed.”

“How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?”